I've been to a couple, when I was in my teens. They made me uncomfortable. It was in Canada, where one of the games is to pelt the stripper with dollar coins, which just made my skin crawl. There was nothing good about the experience.

Well, with our lack of $1 bills, and the difficulty of shoving handfuls of loonies into stripper's bras, we had to come up with something. Although the execution may have been a little poor.

you could give them lacrosse sticks, so they could catch the money before it hits.

i've never been to a strip club, although there are a ton of them down near the bay (what with all the navy and marine stuff). there is, or at least was, a sort of strip club district. it sorta looked like you would feel sleazy just walking on the sidewalks there._________________aka: neverscared!

Perhaps including lesbians as women-oglers would overly complicate the "men are pigs" narrative of Sinfest.

There is quite a different dynamic with women watching other women strip. For one thing, I'm sure most lesbians, being women themselves, have little difficulty understanding that women are people._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

I haven't ever been but our porn shop* has a dark and kind of foreboding looking door in the back that I've adamantly avoided for some time now.

*the only porn shop in town. it's the next door neighbor to the only chocolate shop in town. your one stop shop, as it were.

In the back of a local porn shop, there are glory hole booths. That may be what lues back there. In any case, best to avoid the secret doors of porn shops._________________[Stripeypants has enabled lurk mode.]

Since someone took the time to resurrect this topic, I just want to say this. Someone being forced, I repeat, forced into stripping or any other sex worker position is NOT an issue of feminism. It's a case of human trafficking, an altogether bigger issue._________________Mmm...discussion

Since someone took the time to resurrect this topic, I just want to say this. Someone being forced, I repeat, forced into stripping or any other sex worker position is NOT an issue of feminism. It's a case of human trafficking, an altogether bigger issue.

yeah, don't let the fact that it's predominantly females who are forced into sex work distract you. a thing that happens to females way more than it happens to males, and the reasons why that might be, have nothing to do with feminism.

yeah, don't let the fact that it's predominantly females who are forced into sex work distract you. a thing that happens to females way more than it happens to males, and the reasons why that might be, have nothing to do with feminism.

According to UN reports, it's not most pressed into sex work are female, 98% are. But human trafficking is much bigger than that. It's more than simply being forced into stripping and prostitution. Sex workers are the ones that can be spotted. Labor Camps, house workers, outright slavery, humans given promises of better life and then having their organs harvested and, of course, sex workers are all part of this and getting accurate numbers is not actually possible (but they have tried).

I don't view human trafficking as a feminism issue because the perpetrators behind it are much lower than the those that will treat people differently based on society's stereotypes(very bad). I see it as a problem with people that give away the lives of others for money or power. And that is why I can't see it the same way._________________Mmm...discussion

but saying that the specific aspect of human trafficking that is sex trafficking, in which the victims are overwhelmingly female, has nothing to do with feminism--a variety of movements and ideologies specifically concerned with empowering females and removing conditions that disempower and victimize females--is pretty bizarre. it is pretty hard to imagine a set of conditions that disempower and victimize females more than the conditions of sex trafficking. why would that have nothing to do with feminism?

Something that affects lots and lots of women disproportionately: pretty definitely within the realm of 'feminist business.'

Something that affects lots and lots of men can also, occasionally, be feminist business if the source relates back to the inequality between genders. (example: young boys getting bullied for displaying feminine qualities. shitty and terrible, affects only boys, directly related to how society devalues women, still something feminism addresses and attempts to stop)_________________Samsally the GrayAce

Youth, poverty, immigrants, gender inequality, being unemployed, having a history of sexual abuse and more are risk factors. Gender inequality can play a part but the situation that leads to getting caught up in it can be any of the risk factors. These victims are all taken in, usually at a young age with promises of employment or better lives, because these are often orphans or runways, taken to distant lands(they won't know the areas), and threatened with punishment and other horror (they don't know their rights, or that they even have any). I can't seperate them from either because the victims all come from the same pool of people.

I personally can't look at a single risk factor and call it the main reason someone is forced into sex labor. The real reason I don't call it that is because the guilty parties know what they're doing is wrong. They don't care. Feminism calls on those with the capacity to care for someone other than themselves. Something the world is sorely lacking._________________Mmm...discussion

Feminism addresses gender inequality, full stop. If gender inequality is the reason or one of many reasons behind something, it is a feminist issue.

Nobody said we should ignore the other factors either, because feminism can and should be intersectional. No situation or problem exists in a void outside other influences.

Of course we're not going to talk criminals actively engaging in human trafficking around by discussing Dworkin or whatever. Feminism can be used to ask some important questions, though, and when combined with other important questions eventually challenge the people that do care into changing their society to one that -doesn't- tolerate shitty criminals who traffic people._________________Samsally the GrayAce

it seems to me (admittedly, i have not done extensive research) that a lot of people who are essentially enslaved even for non-sex work are female. one keeps hearing about women working as maids and the like who are essentially imprisoned by the their "employers", who keep their passports, pay them nothing and often subject them to physical abuse. one never seem to hear about male servants in similar conditions. maybe they are there, but one doesn't seem to hear about them.

so it seems to be primarily women who are trapped in these situations. which suggests the people trapping them see them as easier victims - maybe because they are physically weaker, but also often because they have no real voice, no power in the world - because they are women. so while it is definitely a human rights abuse, it is also a gender-equality (i.e., feminist) issue._________________aka: neverscared!